The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / MiscellaniesTolstoy, Leo, graf
Religion
The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
Thus, if all kept the commandment of non-resistance, it is evident
that there would be no offences, no evil deeds. If these formed a
majority, they would establish the reign of love and good-will, even
toward the ill-disposed, by never resisting evil with evil, never
using violence. If there were a considerable minority of these, they
would have such a corrective, moral effect upon society that every
cruel punishment would be abolished, and violence and enmity would
be changed to peace and love. If there were but a small minority of
them, they would rarely experience anything worse than the contempt
of the world, and the world would in the meantime, without noticing
it, and without feeling itself under obligation, become wiser and
better from this secret influence. And if, in the very worst case,
a few members of the minority should be persecuted to death, these
men, dying for the truth, would leave behind them their teaching,
which is already sanctified by their martyr's death.
Peace be with all who seek peace, and all-conquering love be the
imperishable inheritance of every soul, which voluntarily submits to
the Law of Christ: "Resist not evil." In the course of fifty years,
Ballou wrote and edited books dealing mainly with the question
of non-resistance to evil. In these works, which are beautiful
in their lucidity of thought and elegance of expression, the
question is discussed from every possible side. He establishes the
obligatoriness of this commandment for every Christian who professes
the Bible as a divine revelation. He adduces all the customary
retorts to the commandment of non-resistance, both from the Old
Testament and from the New, as, for example, the expulsion from
the temple, and so forth, and all these are overthrown; he shows,
independently of Scripture, the practical wisdom of this rule, and
adduces all the objections which are usually made to it, and meets
all these objections. Thus one chapter of a work of his treats of
non-resistance to evil in exclusive cases, and here he acknowledges
that, if there were cases when the application of non-resistance to
evil were impossible, this would prove that the rule is altogether
untenable. In adducing these special cases, he proves that it is
precisely in them that the application of this rule is necessary and
rational. There is not a single side of the question, either for his
followers or for his adversaries, which is not investigated in these
works. I say all this, in order to show the unquestionable interest
which such works ought to have for men who profess Christianity, and
that, therefore, one would think Ballou's activity ought to have
been known, and the thoughts expressed by him ought to have been
accepted or refuted; but there has been nothing of the kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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